Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie works in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. A Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning, she has spent several years hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed.

Stephanie covers legal affairs and domestic policy in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. A contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

Following last week's verdict in the Jamie Leigh Jones rape case, is the law Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) pushed through Congress in her name now in jeopardy?

Jones' shocking story of being drugged and gang-raped in Iraq by fellow KBR contractors formed the inspiration for the freshman senator's first major legislative victory in October 2009. By a vote of 68 to 30, the Senate approved Franken's measure barring the military from contracting with companies that force their employees to take legal complaints to mandatory arbitration—rather than a civil jury—in cases involving sexual assault. The law would prevent what happened to Jones, who was at first blocked from taking her rape allegations to court because of an arbitration clause in her employment contract with KBR.

After a four-year legal battle, Jones was eventually allowed to present her case to a federal jury, which spent four weeks evaluating her claims. Evidence and testimony during the trial highlighted significant holes in her story, and on Friday, the jury ruled against her, finding that she had not been raped. Now, the verdict has the potential to undermine Franken's signature legislative accomplishment and to significantly set back his efforts to rid the country of unfair arbitration contracts.

"This has never been just about one court case," Franken said in a statement. "Now countless others with similar circumstances will get to have their rightful day in court. No corporation should be able to deny anyone that right."

Some liberal commentators and consumer groups have echoed that sentiment, arguing that the verdict is a victory for the legal system. In the American Prospect, Pema Levy penned an article entitled, "How women won the KBR rape case." She wrote, "While Jones lost her court case, the fact that she got a trial is a win for victims of sexual assault who, like her, had been denied their day in court."

But it's hard to see how bringing—and then losing—a dubious rape case in civil court is a win for victims of sexual assault. If anything, Jones' case, in which she asked the jury to award her $145 million, will make it even more difficult for sexual assault victims to have their claims taken seriously. And it's still an open question as to whether women working as overseas contractors will continue to have access to the civil courts.

That's because Franken's "Jamie Leigh Jones" amendment must be renewed annually as part of the Department of Defense appropriation process. While it passed easily in the Senate in 2009, the amendment was opposed by KBR, other defense contractors and business interests, and the Pentagon. At the time, the 30 GOP senators who voted against the measure were vilified as rape apologists. Now, with Jones' claims in doubt, the amendment may not garner such an outpouring of support the next time around.

"Laws are best based on general situations based on sound principle, not just what allegedly happened to one person," says Victor Schwartz, a DC lawyer who has worked with the business community to limit the rights of consumers and employees to sue big companies. "If this narrow focus is the predicate for a law, it can fall if the individual's situation turns out to lack merit or truth."

No one from the Department of Defense or the offices of Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) or Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who both voted against the Franken amendment, responded to requests for comment. But when the amendment does come up for renewal, it’s likely that KBR will highlight the Jones verdict as one reason why the measure should be discarded. After all, the verdict provides no better evidence for what KBR had been arguing all along: that arbitration shields corporations from spending a fortune to defend themselves from frivolous lawsuits. Indeed, a KBR spokeswoman said in an email:

KBR has always thought that the Franken Amendment was misguided and was the result of political grandstanding. Clearly, the Franken Amendment, which was motivated in no small part by Ms. Jones' testimony before Congress, was based on false allegations that even cursory questioning could have revealed as false.

In the end, the Jones case could end up becoming another piece of ammo for the tort reform crowd. Franken's amendment may only be their first target.

On Wednesday, the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) upped the ante in the ongoing furor over Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the widening British phone-hacking scandal. Democratic members of Congress, including West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, have called on various federal agencies to investigate allegations that reporters working for News Corp.'s News of the World may have hacked the voicemail of 9/11 victims and also attempted to bribe a New York City police officer for their phone records. But CREW has suggested that Congress itself should take up the cause and launch hearings on the brewing scandal. CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan said in a statement:

While it is encouraging that Sen. Rockefeller shares CREW’s concern about whether American 9/11 victims had their voicemails hacked, there is no need to cede all investigative authority to the executive branch. Just as the British Parliament has held hearings and heard the testimony of witnesses, Congress has the ability to subpoena News Corp. employees and require them to explain themselves. The idea that News Corp. may have sought to exploit the victims of one of the darkest days in US history for financial gain is grotesque. Even in these hyper-partisan days, Congress should be able to put the privacy of terrorist victims and their families above politics. Mr. Murdoch and his acolytes must be held accountable here as well as in Great Britain.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) has been one of Congress' biggest supporters of Jamie Leigh Jones, the former KBR contractor who in 2007 alleged she'd been drugged and gang-raped by her co-workers, then imprisoned in a shipping container in retaliation for reporting the episode. Poe played a dramatic role in the harrowing story. Jones claimed that once she was able to call her father in Texas, he in turn called Poe, who then summoned the State Department to rescue her from KBR.

In December 2007, Poe's office issued a press release trumpeting the congressman's role. "Congressman Poe was instrumental in facilitating the return of Jamie after receiving a call from her father in July 2005. Congressman Poe contacted the State Department's Department of Overseas Citizen Services, which then dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to rescue Jamie."

Poe’s high-profile role helped turn Jones' story into a national scandal. But on Friday, the Houston jury hearing her civil case against KBR ruled that Jones was not, in fact, raped. Evidence and testimony presented during the trial highlighted many inconsistencies in Jones' story—but it has also inadvertently revealed a big hole in Poe's account. State Department records and phone logs show that Poe had nothing to do with rescuing Jones.

As it turns out, Poe couldn't have sent in the State Department to save Jones when he said he did. That’s because State Department staff were already there. After reporting her alleged rape and being taken to an Army hospital, Jones called her father in the middle of the night, somewhere around 2 a.m. Houston time, which means that it would have been impossible for him to contact Poe's office for at least several hours. According to trial records (PDF), Poe didn't call the State Department until July 29, 2005, a day after Jones had reported her alleged rape and long after the State Department had gotten involved. State Department staff informed Poe when he called that embassy and investigative staff were already on the scene assisting Jones.

But Poe, a conservative former prosecutor who is more often in the news for quoting the Klan on the House floor, referring to immigrants as grasshoppers, or questioning the president’s citizenship, got lots of kudos for his role in the Jones drama. And he has continued to take credit for calling in the cavalry to help Jones. As recently as April 2010, Poe was on the Hill talking about his part in her rescue, saying:

After being in Iraq just a few days, she said she was drugged and gang raped by fellow employees. She was held hostage in a cargo container for 24 hours without food or water. She was assaulted so badly that later she had to have reconstructive surgery.

She convinced one of the people guarding her to let her borrow a cell phone. She called her dad. Her dad called my office in Texas. With the help of the State Department, we helped immediately to rescue her, and she was quickly brought back to America.

The Congressional Victims Rights Caucus, which Poe co-chairs, gave Jones an award in 2008 for "her efforts in raising national awareness of the plight of Americans victimized abroad." And Poe often introduced Jones at her Hill appearances. Jones even gave her daughter the middle name Poetry in honor of the congressman. He appeared in ABC's original 20/20 expose in 2007 that put Jones' story on the map, and Poe makes a cameo with Jones in Hot Coffee, a new documentary on the civil justice system airing on HBO. (Full disclosure: I am also in the film.)

Since the verdict, however, Poe has been noticeably silent about the case. He did not respond to a request for comment.

For about nine months now, Mother Jones has been trying to get a sense of just how much money might be behind parts of the tea party movement. Specifically, I asked one of the largest umbrella groups, the Tea Party Patriots, for a copy of its federal 990 forms. As a 501 (c)(4), the group is required by law to file the form each year with the IRS and make it public. TPP did not respond to some initial requests. Finally, in January, a spokesman for the group explained that the reason we hadn't been able to get the form is because the organization hadn't filed a return, despite being in existence for almost two years.

The group, which made a name for itself by calling for more government transparency, had tinkered with its filing date in order to avoid public disclosure as long as possible. As a result, it wasn't required to file a return until April 2011—for tax year 2009. So when April rolled around, I asked again. Again, no response. I even asked Mark Meckler, the group's chief financial officer and national coordinator, in person for a copy when he was speaking at Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Conference in DC in June. He promised that the return had been filed and that I could get a copy. So I emailed to follow up, and I waited. Still nothing.

Eventually, I filed a complaint with the IRS, noting that the group wasn't complying with the law. That seems to have done the trick. Late last week, I got a copy of the return. Given that it contains information that is more than a year old, it wasn't especially interesting. It didn't cover, for instance, the period leading up to the midterm elections last fall, when TPP got an anonymous $1 million grant. It did, however, shed some light on how much money the group raised in its early days, and what it did with it.

The highlights:

Between June 2009 and May 31, 2010, TPP raised more than $700,000, not a bad haul for a scrappy upstart.

TPP paid out about $150,000 for employees' salaries and benefits.

$459,000 went to pay for tea party rallies, including the big 9/12 march on the National Mall in September 2009, proving that marching around isn't necessarily "free" speech.

The group ended the fiscal year with only $40,000 in the bank, indicating that it was spending as fast or faster than it was raising money.

Some disgruntled tea partiers who've had issues with the way TPP has spent money might be interested to know that the group shelled out $183,000 on travel that year, as well as more than $60,000 on advertising. Also notable: the only board member who reported receiving a salary was Jenny Beth Martin, who apparently got $36,800. Many tea party activists have suspected Meckler of getting a six-figure salary. According to the tax return, Meckler didn't get paid anything in FY 2009. However, the return also doesn't say who got the rest of the $100K+ in salaries, instead reporting to the IRS that because the group was in its "development" stage, officers and directors were paid via contract for their services, which apparently the group believes they don't have to spell out in the return. Translation: Meckler and other board members were paid for their services, they're just not going to tell the public or even their own members how much.

Her story of a brutal attack in Iraq sparked a national outcry—but how much of it is true?

After fighting for four years to reach the inside of a courtroom, Jamie Leigh Jones has lost her rape and sexual harassment lawsuit against military contractor KBR. After a day and a half of deliberations, a federal jury in Houston answered "no" to the question of whether Jones was raped by former firefighter Charles Bortz while working in Iraq in 2005. It also found that KBR did not engage in fraud in inducing Jones to sign her employment contract to go overseas.

***

The allegations were explosive when they first hit in 2007: A 20-year-old woman named Jamie Leigh Jones alleged that four days after going to work in Iraq for contracting giant KBR in July 2005, she was drugged and gang-raped by fellow contractors. She accused the company, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, of imprisoning her in a shipping container after she reported the rape, and suggested KBR had tampered with some of the medical evidence that had been collected at an Army hospital. The harrowing story has made international headlines. It's been the subject of congressional hearings and has inspired legislation. Jones even plays a starring role in the new documentary Hot Coffee, about efforts to limit access to the justice system.

Jones' charges fell on fertile ground, compounding KBR's reputation as a corporate scofflaw—all the more so when it came out that the firm's contract had included a mandatory arbitration clause intended to block employees from suing it. Jones spent years fighting for a jury trial, and now, six years after the alleged attack, she is finally getting her day in court in a civil suit that accuses KBR of knowingly sending her into a hostile workplace. The verdict could come as early as Thursday. And—in a twist that's likely to shock her numerous supporters—there's a good chance she will lose.